ISSUE 009

SOMETHING LOVELY
​that I saw

I've always been a bit obsessed with whimsy, and this is one of the most delightfully whimsical things I've come across in a while. The post is linked above - I could watch this animation for hours!!

SOMETHING USEFUL
​that I'd like to share

Who watched Severance? (If not, this isn't really a spoiler - if you understand the premise of the show, you should be safe!).

The story is based around the idea of your memory/existence being split in two: work you (your 'innie'), and home you ('outie'), with visibility or memory of what happens in between. The elevator ride to/from the office is this defining moment - you step in at 9am, and the very next moment, from your 'home' you-perspective, you're stepping out at 5pm. No memory of the hours between - they just don't exist for you.

Because I'm a weirdo who connects random dots to random things, I was thinking this is kind of similar to the client experience of a design project. They see the first meeting, they probably see an interim update, the they see the finished space (I know - there's a few more meetings than that, but you get what I mean).

Everything in between - the problem-solving, the iterating, and prototyping, sketching/testing/refining… none of it exists for them unless you show it to them. As far as they're concerned, they 'stepped into the lift' and stepped straight out with no more context to what's happened.

Which means if you don't narrate the work, as far as the client is aware, the work didn't happen.

In Severance, the wall between work-you and home-you isn't accidental - someone chose to put it there.

Same goes for how your clients experience your design process and their project. That gap between "first meeting" and "design development" isn't determined by 'law'. It's a wall you're choosing to put up every time you don't narrate a decision. And at the risk of flogging the wall analogy to death - you can also choose where to put a door in it.

This isn't about showing everything. Nobody wants your innie's daily grind - the fabric samples you ditched, the layout you sketched at 11pm and deleted by morning. You want to differentiate between context and noise.

Curate your thinking - maybe one or two moments where you say: "we considered this. Here's why it didn't work." A floor plan that kept the sightline but had no storage. A material that looked 'nice' on the mood board but would have been completely wrong in the actual context of the room.

This kind of sharing gives clients confidence (and evidence!!) that the final answer was considered and chosen, not just landed on. It turns "here's what I picked" into "here's what I ruled out" - and identifies you as the expert.

If a client can't see your thinking, the only variable left for them to judge you on is the bit they can see, which is usually the price (and sometimes the render). No process, no story, no bueno - and you risk them pricing-checking you against anyone else who can produce a nice render too, because you've made yourself compare-able. Your judgement has commercial value (you just need to show it!).

So the practical version of "don't be an innie" is small - pick one or two moments per project where the "why not" is more interesting than the "why"….and share it with your client.

PS this is also really important if you're managing and developing junior designers - talking through your thinking is how they cumulatively start to develop their own capability and judgement.

SOMETHING INTERESTING
​that I thought about

The dirt paths that cut diagonally across a park, ignoring the paved ones, are called desire paths. Some of the best landscape architects and urban planners use them on purpose - they'll watch where people actually walk, then formalise those paths.

I like to think of it as a reminder that the 'right' layout on paper (or screen for those who don't sketch!!) versus the one people actually use are sometimes two different things. If you can take the time to observe, listen, question and consider, users will tell you what the right solution is, as long as you're taking the time to listen.

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